This is a paper I wrote for my psychology class (it pretty much just had to be a paper about something : P) and I thought I would share it. It has to do with violence but not so much in a martial arts perspective so I'm assuming this is the correct place to post it. Opinions and critique is welcomed. Of course many of the paragraphs will be broken up due to reading friendliness, so the transitions may seem a little funky
A Need for Violence
Violence is defined as physical force exerted for the purpose of violating, damaging, or the abusing of one’s rights as they are understood by society. There are unacceptable ways to use violence; these generally fall under the acts of individuals or small groups who use violence for their own personal gain in the violation of other’s right such as raping, stealing, or murdering, and there are acceptable uses of violence that protect the rights of the majority by the taking of individual/minority groups rights that have infringed upon the rights of others.
These are the rules that provide balance in any society. All societies attempt to use violence to control people in order to prolong itself and the life of the population that makes up that society. Society is defined as a highly structured system of human organization which provides for the protection, continuity, security, and national identity of the people within the society. The societies’ use of violence keeps the society functioning with benefit to the majority, which will lead to the societies’ growth as a whole.
Establishing laws is the most general way societies keep its people in line. Laws are defined as the principles and regulations, maintained by enforcement of punishment established in a community by some authority and applicable to its people. This means that laws are based on the need as it is applied to the people as a whole, and are generally not made for the benefit of one person, or a minority group. These laws are usually based on what is believed to be universal rights. These rights are generally defined in such a way that individual expression and well-being does not affect the whole of the population, and the well-being of the whole does not infringe upon the frights of the individual.
A few examples of this are found in the American Constitution’s first amendments such as the right to free speech, press, religion, peaceable assembly, and the right to arms (defense of one’s own person). These amendments give freedom to the individual as long as the individual does not infringe upon the rights of others. If a person in America were to step beyond the boundaries of their civil freedoms to exert physical force upon somebody unjustly, then their rights are taken away. The violation of the rights of others is defined as violence: the violation, damaging, or abusing of another person’s universal rights, or the well-being of the majority. An example would be one individual or group’s effort to forcibly keep another person or group from voicing their opinion in objection to a situation by the use of fear of or actual physical interaction which harms the individual or group’s basic rights as they have been applied by societies’ established law.
The use of law then intervenes in the assumption that when a group of individual’s rights is taken, the individual who has violated these rights has given up their own rights. This justifies the law’s use of violence: the removing by force of the violators universal rights in order to control them.
Law in society is designed to set regulations which benefit the whole. The laws of social order use fear of punishment for the violation of these laws as a means of controlling its society without immediate direct interaction. Some will argue that not all people follow the law out of fear, but because they believe in the social structure established and thus willingly submit to it as they believe it to be right. Although this may be true, the problem with this is that although their belief in the system of law is honest, there are still other individuals who see otherwise.
These people who think differently about what should be established law are usually kept in check by fear of punishment. For example a man feels the need to satisfy his desire for dominance, sexual, and violent gratification is greater then the civil rights of others, thus he rapes a woman. Without the fear of being punished for this act, many more rapes would most likely occur in a society as many men are aggressive by nature and when mixed with the want for violence and sexual gratification the conclusion often results in what the society has established as a depraved act. The fact remains through wars, the need for public justice, and our lack of anarchy that people violate the established basic human rights and that law must be established. There will always be people who will trample upon what a society has proclaimed the basic rights of its population.
Individual beliefs are usually the source of the establishment of a society and the laws within that society. This comes about through the expression of violent interaction between two people, groups, or the enforcing of one’s beliefs upon the whole in an oppressing way. This causes the need for law to be established as many times one side will be stronger and more resolute in their argument to the point of violence and oppression. An example of this would be an individual’s want for their belief to be established as ultimate law when it sacrifices the human rights of the people within the society. An example would be the persecution of the Jewish population within Germany during World War II.
Hitler believed that the Jewish people within Germany were one of the major contributors to the current state of Germany and consequently stripped away their rights, which eventually led to what we now call the Holocaust. Individual beliefs tend to cause people to be emotional about them and use violence as a means of enforcing their own beliefs. All societies use violence in order to control its people from enforcing their own personal beliefs to keep the welfare of the whole population safe. The only flaw in this is that society is run by men, men who will feel passionate about something which concludes all to often the persecution of a minority, and sometimes even the welfare of the whole population as their beliefs cater only to a minority.
Although society is based on the use of fear of or the actual act ofviolence to enforce its laws for the welfare of the whole, the views on what specifically are the individual rights of human beings as applied to the whole are constantly changing as well as the rights that the whole of the population should have over the individual. Factors such as the need to survive versus the need for peace also have a profound effect upon how a society is structured. Societies that focus on survival have less civil liberties for individuals because the assumption that the state owns its members create an entirely different society then those focused on maintaining personal freedom among its people. This is prevalent in the many different developments of society from communism, democracy, dictatorship, tyranny, etc..
Laws are based, in essence, on the maintaining of individual rights as long as they don’t have an effect on the welfare of the whole, which are in turn based on the opinions of other individual people. The conclusion that the laws of society are changeable then occurs. The change of law is used by the same means in which the society uses to control its people, through violence. Take, for example, the Civil Rights Movement in America. The African American population was believed to be inferior to the white population, and their basic human rights were being violated. The society as it was established by the white community did not see the oppression of the African American population as bad, but the African American’s thought otherwise.
This resulted in a peaceful movements to break the laws of the current society. The violent reaction of the majority of the white population magnified the violation of the African American Population through beatings, rapes, murders, and other various means that went outside of the law. The media coverage caused the American population as a whole to realize that the African American populations rights were being heavily abused and concluded in the complete reformation of how African Americans were allowed to be treated by the white population.
This established new laws and a reconstruction of the current societies’ views upon what human rights were and who they applied to. The same situation also occurred in India under the leadership of Gandhi. Although these movements were peaceful in observance, they still were founded on the idea that breaking a law of the society would be seen as violence and have unjust violence forced upon them in a radical nature leading into the realization of the stripping of individual rights through the violated laws. These movements formed a complete social restructure to adapt to the then current needs of new, publicly established civil rights and liberties for all people.
Although peaceful methods of violating the law in a society have been the most effective way of changing the law, most groups behave otherwise. This is usually expressed through Militant Activism. Militant Activism is defined as a person or group of people who are willing to aggressively assert their beliefs upon others which many times result in violence. These forms of protest usually do not have much of an effect on a well developed society, as these beliefs only apply to a certain group of people and harm others, such as racism, fundamentalism, or sexism.
Society uses the law and the enforcement of the law through condoned violence given to the enforcers of the law as a means of controlling these individuals when they get out of hand and disturb the social order. The health of a society depends on the welfare of all those that make up that particular society. If the majority of individuals that make up a society feel they have no rights, then wars develop, genocides happen, riots break out and the general peace is greatly disturbed.
Examples of this would include the American Revolution which occurred because of the oppression of the current government established by society which decided to put the costs of their wars upon the colonies alone; the Civil Rights movements in both America and India when individual rights were being taken, and the plethora of rebel factions formed in essence for the liberation of the people within Africa , usually resulting in more oppression and violence than before. The society bases laws upon what is seen as the well being for all those that make up the population of the society. In order to keep the welfare of the general public safe from violent interactions with people who would rather have their own views pressed upon others, the society establishes laws which are forced or accepted by the people through violence.
Whether the societies methods are correct in their application of violence is up to opinion, but all current societies methods are correct in their application of violence is up to opinion, but all current societies have used violence to control its people. The foundation of society is based on the ability to use violence in order to establish the well being of its people, and in turn creates a peaceful environment for the safety of it’s population. Thus the old adage: Peace through violence.
A Need for Violence
Violence is defined as physical force exerted for the purpose of violating, damaging, or the abusing of one’s rights as they are understood by society. There are unacceptable ways to use violence; these generally fall under the acts of individuals or small groups who use violence for their own personal gain in the violation of other’s right such as raping, stealing, or murdering, and there are acceptable uses of violence that protect the rights of the majority by the taking of individual/minority groups rights that have infringed upon the rights of others.
These are the rules that provide balance in any society. All societies attempt to use violence to control people in order to prolong itself and the life of the population that makes up that society. Society is defined as a highly structured system of human organization which provides for the protection, continuity, security, and national identity of the people within the society. The societies’ use of violence keeps the society functioning with benefit to the majority, which will lead to the societies’ growth as a whole.
Establishing laws is the most general way societies keep its people in line. Laws are defined as the principles and regulations, maintained by enforcement of punishment established in a community by some authority and applicable to its people. This means that laws are based on the need as it is applied to the people as a whole, and are generally not made for the benefit of one person, or a minority group. These laws are usually based on what is believed to be universal rights. These rights are generally defined in such a way that individual expression and well-being does not affect the whole of the population, and the well-being of the whole does not infringe upon the frights of the individual.
A few examples of this are found in the American Constitution’s first amendments such as the right to free speech, press, religion, peaceable assembly, and the right to arms (defense of one’s own person). These amendments give freedom to the individual as long as the individual does not infringe upon the rights of others. If a person in America were to step beyond the boundaries of their civil freedoms to exert physical force upon somebody unjustly, then their rights are taken away. The violation of the rights of others is defined as violence: the violation, damaging, or abusing of another person’s universal rights, or the well-being of the majority. An example would be one individual or group’s effort to forcibly keep another person or group from voicing their opinion in objection to a situation by the use of fear of or actual physical interaction which harms the individual or group’s basic rights as they have been applied by societies’ established law.
The use of law then intervenes in the assumption that when a group of individual’s rights is taken, the individual who has violated these rights has given up their own rights. This justifies the law’s use of violence: the removing by force of the violators universal rights in order to control them.
Law in society is designed to set regulations which benefit the whole. The laws of social order use fear of punishment for the violation of these laws as a means of controlling its society without immediate direct interaction. Some will argue that not all people follow the law out of fear, but because they believe in the social structure established and thus willingly submit to it as they believe it to be right. Although this may be true, the problem with this is that although their belief in the system of law is honest, there are still other individuals who see otherwise.
These people who think differently about what should be established law are usually kept in check by fear of punishment. For example a man feels the need to satisfy his desire for dominance, sexual, and violent gratification is greater then the civil rights of others, thus he rapes a woman. Without the fear of being punished for this act, many more rapes would most likely occur in a society as many men are aggressive by nature and when mixed with the want for violence and sexual gratification the conclusion often results in what the society has established as a depraved act. The fact remains through wars, the need for public justice, and our lack of anarchy that people violate the established basic human rights and that law must be established. There will always be people who will trample upon what a society has proclaimed the basic rights of its population.
Individual beliefs are usually the source of the establishment of a society and the laws within that society. This comes about through the expression of violent interaction between two people, groups, or the enforcing of one’s beliefs upon the whole in an oppressing way. This causes the need for law to be established as many times one side will be stronger and more resolute in their argument to the point of violence and oppression. An example of this would be an individual’s want for their belief to be established as ultimate law when it sacrifices the human rights of the people within the society. An example would be the persecution of the Jewish population within Germany during World War II.
Hitler believed that the Jewish people within Germany were one of the major contributors to the current state of Germany and consequently stripped away their rights, which eventually led to what we now call the Holocaust. Individual beliefs tend to cause people to be emotional about them and use violence as a means of enforcing their own beliefs. All societies use violence in order to control its people from enforcing their own personal beliefs to keep the welfare of the whole population safe. The only flaw in this is that society is run by men, men who will feel passionate about something which concludes all to often the persecution of a minority, and sometimes even the welfare of the whole population as their beliefs cater only to a minority.
Although society is based on the use of fear of or the actual act ofviolence to enforce its laws for the welfare of the whole, the views on what specifically are the individual rights of human beings as applied to the whole are constantly changing as well as the rights that the whole of the population should have over the individual. Factors such as the need to survive versus the need for peace also have a profound effect upon how a society is structured. Societies that focus on survival have less civil liberties for individuals because the assumption that the state owns its members create an entirely different society then those focused on maintaining personal freedom among its people. This is prevalent in the many different developments of society from communism, democracy, dictatorship, tyranny, etc..
Laws are based, in essence, on the maintaining of individual rights as long as they don’t have an effect on the welfare of the whole, which are in turn based on the opinions of other individual people. The conclusion that the laws of society are changeable then occurs. The change of law is used by the same means in which the society uses to control its people, through violence. Take, for example, the Civil Rights Movement in America. The African American population was believed to be inferior to the white population, and their basic human rights were being violated. The society as it was established by the white community did not see the oppression of the African American population as bad, but the African American’s thought otherwise.
This resulted in a peaceful movements to break the laws of the current society. The violent reaction of the majority of the white population magnified the violation of the African American Population through beatings, rapes, murders, and other various means that went outside of the law. The media coverage caused the American population as a whole to realize that the African American populations rights were being heavily abused and concluded in the complete reformation of how African Americans were allowed to be treated by the white population.
This established new laws and a reconstruction of the current societies’ views upon what human rights were and who they applied to. The same situation also occurred in India under the leadership of Gandhi. Although these movements were peaceful in observance, they still were founded on the idea that breaking a law of the society would be seen as violence and have unjust violence forced upon them in a radical nature leading into the realization of the stripping of individual rights through the violated laws. These movements formed a complete social restructure to adapt to the then current needs of new, publicly established civil rights and liberties for all people.
Although peaceful methods of violating the law in a society have been the most effective way of changing the law, most groups behave otherwise. This is usually expressed through Militant Activism. Militant Activism is defined as a person or group of people who are willing to aggressively assert their beliefs upon others which many times result in violence. These forms of protest usually do not have much of an effect on a well developed society, as these beliefs only apply to a certain group of people and harm others, such as racism, fundamentalism, or sexism.
Society uses the law and the enforcement of the law through condoned violence given to the enforcers of the law as a means of controlling these individuals when they get out of hand and disturb the social order. The health of a society depends on the welfare of all those that make up that particular society. If the majority of individuals that make up a society feel they have no rights, then wars develop, genocides happen, riots break out and the general peace is greatly disturbed.
Examples of this would include the American Revolution which occurred because of the oppression of the current government established by society which decided to put the costs of their wars upon the colonies alone; the Civil Rights movements in both America and India when individual rights were being taken, and the plethora of rebel factions formed in essence for the liberation of the people within Africa , usually resulting in more oppression and violence than before. The society bases laws upon what is seen as the well being for all those that make up the population of the society. In order to keep the welfare of the general public safe from violent interactions with people who would rather have their own views pressed upon others, the society establishes laws which are forced or accepted by the people through violence.
Whether the societies methods are correct in their application of violence is up to opinion, but all current societies methods are correct in their application of violence is up to opinion, but all current societies have used violence to control its people. The foundation of society is based on the ability to use violence in order to establish the well being of its people, and in turn creates a peaceful environment for the safety of it’s population. Thus the old adage: Peace through violence.